Watch me read this:
I’ve loved Kevin Smith from the evening in high school when I watched Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back for the first time with some friends and laughed so hard that I cried. I was stone cold sober and had never smoked weed in my life.
So I was super interested when
tweeted a video from Mr. Smith. Watching it spurred many a thought and feeling.Perhaps not shockingly for a video titled “Trauma is Trauma,” Smith points out that the part of the brain that processes trauma doesn’t differentiate between a fat-shaming teacher and a bullet whizzing past your head. It’s all trauma.
It is. But it isn’t.
After talking about his childhood sexual abuse, Smith says. “I went home and never said anything because I was scared and humiliated and ashamed and I was a Catholic kid and so I was like, ‘God!’ Worried about sin and whatnot.”
Smith never said anything.
There’s a reason sexual misconduct is more likely to lead to PTSD than any other event, including losing a child. Social support determines how traumatic an event is.
Sexual shame makes childhood sexual abuse like Smith’s more traumatic by forcing survivors to carry their trauma alone.
Sexual shame is part of why child sexual abuse is rampant in Catholic and Evangelical churches. Christian leaders have spent half a millennia teaching small children that their bodies and sex are sinful while saying absolutely nothing about consent. What the fuck did they expect to happen?
Stigmatizing sex doesn’t just increase rates of child sexual abuse.
Stigmatizing sex through abstinence-only sex ed increases rates of adolescent pregnancy, STIs and sexual assault. And hundreds of studies show that comprehensive, medically accurate sex education doesn’t increase teen sex.
Stigmatizing sex work makes it more dangerous.
A recent study showed sex work criminalization increases everyone’s risk of rape. Countries that cracked down on prostitution had more rapes overall than countries that relaxed their sex work legislation. Not only that, but the illiberal countries’ rape rates increased four times more than the liberal countries decreased.
Not only is sexual authoritarianism linked with higher rates of violence, but sexual freedom correlates more closely with violence than the strength of a country’s rule of law.
Sexual stigma increases rape by reinforcing rape myths (rape is rare, he didn't mean to, it wasn't really rape, it’s the victim’s fault). Widespread rape myth acceptance keeps survivors silent, and the vicious cycle continues.
To summarize, stigmatizing sex:
Reliably fails to prevent childhood sexual abuse, rape, overall violence, unplanned pregnancies, and STIs
Actually creates more childhood sexual abuse, rape, overall violence, unplanned pregnancies, and STIs
Makes childhood sexual abuse, rape, overall violence, unplanned pregnancies, and STIs even more traumatic by emotionally isolating survivors
And, it’s extremely unpleasant for everyone involved!
Christian sexual shame is supposed to discourage gay and extra-marital sex.
My first instinct is, who the fuck cares what consenting adults do with their genitals?
But then this same morning Lux also tweeted:
“If you mocked me for being a slut I was just gonna come back twice as slutty to show you I didn't give a fuck. The people who actually helped me learn to make healthier choices were the ones who showed me unconditional love and didn't judge me for my sexual behavior.”
When I discovered Smith in high school, I was still balls-deep in True Love Waits bullshit. But even then, I loved the way Smith wrote about sex — fully funny and ridiculous and absurd and gross and beautiful. He wrote women like they were humans before it was cool. And he clearly worshipped his wife in his books. I still remember reading about the first time they made out and dry humped a sore onto his dick. As a fellow fan of the dry hump, I felt less alone. I didn’t want to read fucking Anna Karenina in high school. I still don’t. I want to read about Kevin Smith’s dick sores and hemorrhoids because those things, my babies, comprise the universal human experience.
Part of the reason I’m so worked up about this video is that the one time I got to see Kevin Smith live, it was the friend who recently committed suicide who drove us. I wish he’d lived to see this video.
Kevin Smith’s whole career seems to be: Life is hard and lonely. I’m going to try to make you laugh, help you feel less alone, and teach you what I’ve learned the hard way.
These are amazing goals, and very much mine as well. But with one addition: Fuck sexual shame and stigma.
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